


There's a Dearth of Poetry About Spies

by Thassalia



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Iron Man 3, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sex is totally a plot, Spies, Supposed to be a sex romp through Europe but it got away from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:11:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4351949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s truly a fantasy, and one she could spin, for him, but spies don’t work like that -- in breathless, charged teams. They need steady hands, even heart rates. And if she were somewhere she thought she’d get caught she’d just leave, or lie. Eliminate the threat one way or another."</p>
<p>Spies, and control, and figuring out how to see each other clearly. Bruce and Natasha fail at the sex romp through Europe. Well, they fail at the romping.  Starts mid-IM3, continues until AoU but isn't particularly compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Warsaw

**Author's Note:**

> After we wrote [Frog in a Blender](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4279791/chapters/9693444), I wanted to write [Feldman](http://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman) a present for doing all the heavy lifting. And what was supposed to be a short, pornographic romp through Europe ended up long and pornographic and angstier than I anticipated.

She sees the news about Stark’s potential demise on Al-Jazeera, sitting in the tiny Warsaw hotel’s equally tiny lobby.It certainly looked like he’d been blown to bits, but then Stark was surprisingly resourceful.She decides to mourn him anyway. Or mourn something. 

He’d called her one day, out of the blue. “Do you sleep, Agent Romanoff?” No preamble and she didn’t bother to ask how he got her number.

Fury seemed to think she should take phone calls from mad scientists.

“No, Stark,” she said, “But then, I’m not really human. You know that.”

“Wanna come back and work for me?” he’d asked.

“I have a job,” she said. Paused. “Tony, if you need to talk…” She didn’t actually want to talk to him.  

“Nah,” he said. “I’ll talk to Pepper. Or maybe I won’t. Banner left a week ago. But it’s fine.”

Ah, the real reason Fury gave him her number.

“Take care of yourself, Stark,” she said and hung up and ditched her phone. That had been a month ago.

There’s a small bar next door to her hotel, a local place, serving equal parts coffee and Sliwowitz and tiny plates of pickles. She leaves her weapons behind, aside from the gun in her bag, goes there, camps out in the corner and refuses equal parts dark looks and proffered drinks from men in shabby Soviet-era suits, until one of them sits down with her.

“Fancy meeting you here.” Banner’s voice is low, but amused like he’s cracked himself up. Or he’s nervous and trying to hide it. Frankly, with him, it could be either. He sets a bottle of Polish potato vodka on the small table between them. 

She uncaps it, pours for them both.“Na zdrowie.”  

She downs the vodka, puts the glass on the table, and tilts her head. He looks pretty good, bad suit coat aside. Like he’s been sleeping a little, doing something productive with his time. She thinks maybe his glasses are new.She’s been keeping lazy tabs on him. Nothing invasive, just enough to make sure he was...safe. Secured. Secure. But she’d been busy lately. Information was still a hotter commodity than aliens. 

“Seriously,” she says, “Were you really in the neighborhood, because that seems unlikely?”  

Not really so unlikely. She’d known he was in Europe. 

He shrugs. “Does Romania count?”

She lifts an eyebrow.It’s hardly a jaunt.

“Viral outbreak, and viruses don’t do much to me, so…”

“You’re a one man U.N.” She motions to him to pour again. 

Banner doesn’t make her nervous. Terrified, maybe, but not nervous. But then, there were so many bigger things to fear.That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t wake up some nights, breathless, ashamed, seeing that look on his face in the carrier, the moment before he turned. The pain there, and his own horror at being seen. That scares her more than his rage, and she owns her role in it.

“Part of a small team, and unsanctioned,” he clarifies because he can’t help himself. Precision is very important to him. She twists her mouth like she knows he thinks it’s funny, but it’s really not.

“I thought you and Physics,” she said, “That you went to play with Stark so you could get gooey over string theory or subatomic particles or something, not play around with viruses.”

“They’re not dissimilar,” he says. “Tiny things that spin universes.”

“Poetic, doc,” she says, “but why are you here?”

She can see a hundred different explanations run across his face, and she knows he won’t be able to lie to her, but she’s still glad when he doesn’t try.

“I checked in,” he says, finally.  “The other day, when I saw Tony running his mouth on international TV. I got worried, and I checked in, and somehow that ended up with Fury telling me you were somewhere in Poland if I wanted to say hi. Have a chat. Catch up.” His mouth twists with self-deprecation, a little disgust, a little dark humor. It makes her like him more, every time. The bright, bitterness of his wit.  She likes gallows humor. It makes Barton make so much more sense.

She sips from her glass this time instead of shooting it back.  She’d also called Fury, and a brisk, frigid exchange left her angry and frustrated and stuck in Warsaw, no way to offer assistance to a teammate. No way to process the idea of having teammates out here in the cold.  A partner was different, an organization, but...she shrugs. 

“Nick’s idea of deep cover and classified is kind of fucked these days,” she says finally.

Bruce clearly doesn’t know what to do with that. He swallows. “I didn’t want to bother you,” he says, “didn’t know if you’d want...” He lifts a shoulder. “Too late now.”

She lets the discomfort settle in a little, and he starts to squirm and she feels a little guilty, but not enough to stop, and then finally caves. 

“Bruce,” she says, and decides to play fair, gives him a truth that surprises her too. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He gives her a little nod like he’s not quite sure he believes her, but what are you gonna do?  

All day, watching the footage, the anger and regret and helplessness stirring in her, churning and roiling, and there’s something strangely soothing about Banner and his own brand of assurance and doubt, his own fierce certainties. His hair is curling around his ears, and she wonders, briefly, what it would feel like, to scrape her nails along his scalp, to try and set him to rights, to mess him up more.

“Are you actually undercover?” he asks, suddenly, leaning forward, like it’s kind of intriguing. Like he’s got a spy fantasy hanging out somewhere deep under those dusky layers of self-protection and warm, dark eyes.  Sex and death, she thinks, guilt and absolution. She can feel it pulling between them both. She thinks maybe they both failed Stark, maybe they both need to figure out a way around that pain.

Her mouth twitches, and she leans towards him because playing out a weakness is always her first choice. “Maybe.”

“Hmm,” he looks at her mouth, and she feels a little flush start, allows him to see because it looks like he has a _specific_ spy fantasy.

She can see it herself, like she’s watching outside of her body, pushing him into a closet in a fancy house, hiding from view while people search for them, his leg pressed up between hers, his hands spanning her back, her arms around his neck, breathless and in sync, struggling for silence, lips so close to hers that she can practically taste him, a quiver of fear and longing surging back and forth, the risk and danger making him shake, her mouth against his ear, misdirection, turning the stress into desire…

It’s truly a fantasy, and one she could spin, for him, but spies don’t work like that -- in breathless, charged teams. They need steady hands, even heart rates. And if she were somewhere she thought she’d get caught she’d just leave, or lie. Eliminate the threat one way or another.   

“No,” she sits back, crosses her arms. “I’m not undercover.”   

But he’s looking at her like some of what just slid through her mind has been ricocheting along his own, pupils contracted. He takes off his glasses, and puts them in his pocket. He looks unsettled, and she wonders what he’d look like properly fucked.

She shakes her head again, trying to clear it. She’s all over the place tonight. “Bruce, I wouldn’t tell you if I were; but anyway, I’m benched until this mess gets settled because Fury thinks I’m gonna go do something stupid.”

His gaze hardens like resolve, pupils narrowing like that sex fantasy just retracted into a different type of visualization. “Are you?”

“No.” She makes a fist, digs her nails into her palm, finds that center of calm that she has relied on for a long time, looks at him, sees a similar process in the dark irises. 

Huh. 

It’s not like she didn’t know that mirror existed, but it’s different, when she doesn’t need anything from him, and has the luxury of watching.  So she keeps watching.

She sees a blush creep along his cheekbones, and he sits back, fiddles with his glass. 

“Would you. If you could?”

She'd actually like to know his answer to that.  Would you let go? Would you let that rage and destruction unleash if you had a target? How much control do you have and is that why you're sitting here, looking at me? Because I've seen what you can do and you want to be accountable? Or do you just need violence that meets your own?

Instead, she asks, “Why did you leave Stark’s bountiful playground?” 

It’s his turn to shrug, withdrawing a little. “Tony...is a lot. Full time. I’m not used to that much…attention... " he trails off, and she thinks, “ _It got too comfortable, and you couldn’t keep hating yourself, so you ran.”_

“It felt self-indulgent,” he says, dark and sharp. “And now I think I was just being selfish."

She barks out a laugh. “You think you could have stopped Stark from taunting anyone, from running his mouth?”

“Maybe,” he shakes his head. “Maybe not.”

She’s caught, for a moment, with wanting to reach out, grip his hand tight enough to let him know that she understands, and that he’s still being a fucking idiot. Nothing could stop Tony with a bone in his teeth.  Not even the Hulk.  He'd die and still keep talking, taunting fate. He has, in fact.

She wants to say this to Banner, but he looks so bruised already that she tries for kind. “I don’t think anyone could have done anything,” she says. “To keep him safe. Or else I think they’d have let me go. Someone, at least. This,” she curls her lip, “If that were really the kind of thing they’re selling on the news, one of us would have been sent in. It’s smoke and mirrors, but whatever is behind it is something bigger, and uglier and worse.”

He quirks his mouth like that's not really comforting. Well, it's never been her strength.

“What I mean is that you couldn’t have done anything. For Stark.”

“I wanted to be left alone, to stop trying so fucking hard to be normal,” he rubs his mouth with his thumb, harsh and honest. Weary. "But my normal wasn't ever going to look like that and Tony's version of normal is so goddamned pushy."

His face has lost some of the warmth and animation, hardening, and she realizes he’s been struggling to hold on to his own mask so tightly, to show her someone contained and healthy, and just can’t anymore. It’s a kind of a relief, to be honest.

“I got tired. Of being pushed, and now…” he darts his eyes up at the TV which keeps running footage of the destruction with different languages scrolling across, but all announcing Stark’s death.  

He shakes his head, fills up the glass again.

“To Tony,” he says softly, and she clinks against his glass.

“It’s okay,” she says, and it’s slow, hard for her to say. She’s not quite sure what sort of meaning she’s trying to layer under it. But she finally gives in, finding the urge unsettling, and reaches out, touching his wrist. His skin is warm. “To not want to be alone.”

He looks at her hand, like he wants to touch her back.  He doesn’t do anything, and she starts to withdraw and then he catches her fingers, sliding his thumb across her knuckles.

“Selfish,” he says, “In this particular case, though. Maybe always.”

She shakes her head, not because he’s wrong, but because she kind of agrees. That doesn’t mean it’s bad.  She often does her best work alone. Her own brand of selfish is that she likes it. He’s still holding her hand.

“No,” she says, and makes up her mind, grips back. It’s a little awkward, but she finds she doesn’t want to let go.  “Human. You still get to be human, Bruce.”

He meets her gaze, intensity flashing there, something deeper and she holds on as they both ride it out, a little breathless. Her words had been anything but casual.  Whatever his monster is, the roots are twined into those most human of things--rage and fear and survival.  She understands that so deeply she can feel it ricochet between them.

She takes her hand from his, pours them both another drink, but honestly, she’s had enough.

"Let's get out of here," she says, making a decision. She puts coins on the table, takes her bag and he follows her.

The night is crisp, tasting of spring, and they walk companionably, circling through the square, circling around the obvious.  She tells him an abbreviated version of her first mission in the city when she had come to SHIELD and immediately been sent back to Eastern Europe in the the winter. How breathlessly cold it had been, how she'd been sure that someone was going to take her down and she'd die here amongst pretty buildings and narrow streets.  She's hated Warsaw ever since.

He talks about the viral outbreak, how it should have been better contained, the edgy suspicion he has about its origins. About the food in the small camp outside the city, and small pieces of technology that can make a difference in places that should frankly have better options and don't.

They don't talk about heroes or monsters, or the temptation to unleash either. As it gets later, he puts a hand on her back, steadying, to steer her around a couple leaning against each other, breathless in each other and taking up all of the alley. Heat flushes through her at the touch, noticeable in its absence as they step around the couple and he withdraws.

There’s a small orchestra playing in the square, and they sit down on a bench and listen. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, lets them drop between his knees.

“He called me,” she says, suddenly, looking at the musicians.  “A few weeks ago. He was upset that you left. I think. No, that’s true. He was. Asked if I slept. I didn’t do anything about it.”

She turns to look at him, and he’s nodding, looking at his hands.  “He kept sending me these stupid emails. Memes of supernovas and the arc reactors powering life-sized robot cats.”

He looks up at her, and there’s something beautiful and terrible about him stripped of everything but pain. 

"He kept pushing me to let go, to embrace the monster. So I left. And if I'd stayed, I could have helped."

It's a false construct and they both know it; it's not so different from her own false construct.  _My violence is bigger.  I'm worse. I should have been there to be worse on his behalf._

She doesn’t touch people unbidden, that moment in the cafe an anomaly, but she wants, somehow, to smooth that pain from his face.  She’s not sure she’s even going to reach out until her fingers are on his cheekbone, sliding along his jaw. The grain of his skin, the slight texture of the stubble scratchy along her fingertips is hypnotic, hyper-realized. She likes it so much more than she should.

His breath hitches, eyes narrowing, and his gaze shifts into something else, something familiar, startling and covetous, far more real than any of her earlier amused fantasy, her wry speculation.  He covers her hand, turns it slightly, slides his mouth along her wrist, pressing a kiss to the pulse as it beats there. He runs his thumb over that pulse, like he’s feeling her heartbeat.

The flush spreads all over her body, and he doesn’t let go of her hand.

"Do you even have a place to stay?" she asks, sounds so throaty that it’s an invitation in of itself.

He shakes his head, "Mostly I thought I'd turn right around, go back, not see you. Or get a hotel, see the city."

It’s a long way to go to end the night alone, but that has nothing to do with what’s stretching between them.

He’s not asking, or hinting, and that heat flickering along her skin is making her stupid. Sex and death, she thinks again and she wants to see his pupils blown out with want, hair mussed, body loose in her bed, mouth open as he comes. She wants something bigger than her control, her own hands on her body to help her forget. Something that scares her.

"I'm close," she says, "Come with me."

"That sounds like a terrible idea," he says slowly, voice pitched deep, and in his mouth, the phrase sounds like a promise. He’s still holding her hand, thumb rubbing circles on her skin.

"Probably," she murmurs, “but maybe not the worst idea I’ve had.”  

He rolls his bottom lip against his teeth.

“I think,” she continues, “that we could both use something selfish tonight.”  

She waits, and finally he nods, like it hurts to agree and he can't help himself. He stands, pulls her up from the bench.

It isn’t, she thinks later, so terribly selfish. Anticipation curls through her as he follows her up the narrow, winding staircase. The light is out on her floor and below, has been all week, the only illumination trickling up in an anemic glow from the lobby. She starts to turn as she reaches the landing in front of her room, and he catches at her hands, holds her wrists loosely behind her back.  

He moves further into her space. “Tell me you want this,” he says, low against her ear. “No hints, no metaphors. I can’t...I need to hear it.”

The feeling of his hands, the question in his voice, the tremor of want licks at her. 

“I don’t always get what I want,” he’d said the first time they met, and that felt like a different universe. He’d surprised her then, showing up when she’d written him off, and he’s surprising her now. It scares her, thrills her, and she tilts up her face, makes sure he can see where she stands. 

“Yes,” she says. “I want this. Do you?”

He moves towards her in the near dark, balancing precariously on the stair below her so their mouths are level, but the control is clearly hers. His forearms press gently against her waist as his fingers band her wrists, but she could shake loose at any time, push away, do damage. There are small, slight tremors running through his arms. Control, she thinks, and it ramps up her desire, that small struggle.

“Why,” he asks, mouth against her ear, “Aren’t you afraid of me? Of anyone…”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” she says. “You wouldn’t be here if you thought it was a risk.”

She means here on this landing. Here in Warsaw. Here in Europe.

“Do you want me to be afraid?” she asks.

He starts to shake his head, but she sees the truth in his eyes. He’s so close she can feel his breath, smell the scent of his skin, the place by his mouth, the vodka, the coolness of the night air.

"Yes," she breathes out softly, his mouth so enticingly close.  "I’m afraid. That doesn’t change anything."

It’s not a lie, it’s just not the truth that he thinks it is.  

He moves finally, with agonizing slowness, like hearing the admission allows him this, like it’s a relief but still not a guarantee.  He brushes against her lips, holds his breath.  

“Tell me,” she whispers against his mouth. “That you want this. I think I’d like to give you something that you want.”

She tenses her wrists, and he gives in, kisses her like the answer to a question. 

“Yes,” he murmurs.

His mouth is so warm, lips soft if a little dry, and he tastes like liquor and something else underneath, rich and alive. Electric. He slides his tongue against her teeth, teasing, and presses harder on her wrists. She bites at his lip, wanting to touch, liking the boundary. She sees them both, layered under his kiss, the man and the monster, both trembling with the effort of keeping control.  She can acknowledge to herself that the duality is part of the appeal, that it helped spark the interest. Something else is sparking here, though, hot and desperate between them and she leans into him.

Now he steps up onto the landing, letting go of her wrists, and buries his hands in her hair. She kisses him this time, hands digging into his sides, nipping, biting, bruising.  His mouth opens, tongue sliding along hers, tasting her, and she pulls his hips hard against her.   He moves to her neck, teeth sharp, breathing her in, and she whimpers. She thought, perhaps, he’d be hesitant. Tentative. She shouldn’t have worried.

She pulls him into her room. 

They don’t have a pattern or precedence for this. She doesn’t sleep with people she works with. She doesn’t know who he fucks, although she did. She knew everything about him - a balance of power between them so deeply unfair, unless it was knowledge vs force. And that alone suggests that this is a bad idea. But right now, it doesn’t seem like a sufficient deterrent. Ambient light spilling in from the windows casts them in shadow, starlight and streetlights and the neighbors arguing across the way.  

He puts his fingers against her mouth, thumb brushing against her lower lip, fingers curling on her cheek, and her belly tightens. She scrapes her teeth against the pad of his thumb, curling her hand around his knuckles.  

He’s got this look in his eyes like he’s making a choice, and she waits, willing him to decide. It is far from the hardest thing she’s ever waited for.

Call it a memorial, call it remembering they’re alive, call it punishment or payment or just a desolate kind of loneliness. She doesn’t care what either of them calls it. She wants to strip him down. She wants his hands on her.  She wants the luxury of forgetting for a few hours. She’d like to give him that same gift.

Reciprocity. Payback. Or maybe just a good, honest, breathless fuck with someone who’s giving her every impression of being able to deliver such a thing.  Someone she doesn’t have to be anonymous with, can let her pain show a little, and be seared by his. 

She doesn’t often allow herself to want, and she can bury it in stillness, if that’s what it takes.

Finally, he says her name, curling it around in his mouth, reaching out with his other hand to slide his fingers along her collarbone, to rest on her sternum, curving around her neck. Deliberation, decision made. He seems to know exactly what he’s doing, and she lets herself unfurl, just a bit.

He reaches down, ruching up the side of her dress slowly until her thigh is bare, nails scraping against her skin. He spans his hand over the back of her thigh, sliding up to cup the cheek of her ass. His hand is so warm she can feel the whorl of his palm through the delicate silk of her underwear.  

She bites her lip, the heat spreading through every bit of her. She wants that warm palm just a little closer, cupping her, stroking.  The room is sparsely furnished, but it’s full of walls and he leans in to kiss her, licks into her mouth as he shuffles her back to the closest wall facing out to the street.  He presses into her hips, presses her against the wall, and she can feel how hard he is.

She puts her hands on his waist, under the shirt and coat, feeling the satiny stretch of skin and muscle, trying to tug him closer, grinding against him. He groans and then moves back a little but keeps his hands on her.

He slips his fingers along the seam of her thigh and ass, following it back to stroke between her legs. She gasps, relief mixing with desire at his nimble touch. He’s either thought this through, or he’s a hell of an improviser.  He kisses her neck, slides his hand along the front of her to brush her cunt with the back of his fingers. She’s hot, and wet, even through silk. She cants up her hips, eager for more, reaches out towards him, brushing against his cock.

“Natasha,” he mumbles, teeth against her ear, “Put your hands behind your head. I need...” he trails off. “Let me…”

She does what he asks, clenching against her own need to touch, but is willing to play along, turned on at the turn of events.  Her dress is simple, well-tailored and expensive, clothes for a woman who spends a little more money than she should. She hasn’t completely let go of the persona she came here with. He undoes the tie at her waist, unthreads and unwraps and opens her to his gaze. Her bra and underwear are indulgent and delicate, the black silk stark against her skin. She can see on his face that he likes it, the way he worries his lip, shifts his stance, but doesn’t touch himself, trying to adjust his erection without adding pressure.

She expects endearments from him, something warm and crooning, reflecting his own infinite warmth, but she’s oddly pleased when he stays quiet, rubs a thumb against her nipple, rough palm cupping her breast, dragging the fabric down to expose her fully, followed by the heat of his mouth. It’s a tease though, and he moves on, pressure and longing as his fingers skitter along her ribs, brush her belly, slide along hips, and thighs, and then he gently hooks his fingers in the slim bands of her underwear and slips them down to her feet, leaving her bare. 

She steps out of them, navigating balance in her heels, kicks them to the side without being asked. There’s a small, delicious ache in her biceps.The need to move is growing more desperate--to open his shirt, scratch her nails down along his chest, catch his mouth again, fist her hand around his cock. Instead, she keeps her arms behind her head, and lets him take her in.

Control, she thinks. There are illusions that he needs, particularly from her. He needs to trust that she can listen, that she can wait. She can practically read that vibrating off him. He’s breathing heavily now, watching her, waiting as she stays where he put her.It isn’t about dominance, but about controlling himself, seeing how much he can stand. Knowing that he’s earned that chance to touch. She thinks its probably always been like that, even before he thought he had to justify touch. 

That thought stutters along her skin and a wave rolls through her. She tightens her inner muscles, and he can see her ride out that tremor and his fingers flex. 

“Do you need,” she asks, so softly, not wanting to spook him, "me to beg?”

He shakes his head.  She doesn’t quite believe him.

“I could,” she says.

He steps in closer, hands on her hips, and she wants so much more.

She tilts her hips.  He leans in, kisses the flutter of her pulse, licks behind her ear, mouth against her jaw. 

“If you begged,” he says, gravel-voiced and thready, “You wouldn’t really mean it.”

She might, she thinks, she really fucking might. But he's not wrong. 

“Please,” she says, but it’s not a request any more than his order had been. “I want…”

He shakes his head, and she knows. Certain.

“Fuck me,” she says instead, finds the on switch.

Then his teeth scrape along her neck, her breast, fingers sliding through her lips to stroke her clit, and she hiccups her relief as she fists her hands in his hair, and they fumble his fly open, hitching up her leg around his hip, and his cock is finally in her hand, hot and hard and silky. She grasps, strokes, and he hikes her up further, thighs around his waist, and he slides inside. She bangs her head back against the wall, and he thrusts hard, gasping, his cock sweet and thick and perfect as she bucks down against him. 

She can’t come like this but if feels too fucking good to stop, the pressure, and the fullness and the wall against her back. She tightens around him, nails seeking purchase against his shirt, his fingers biting into the flesh of her hips, and when he speeds up, slamming into her, she digs her fingers into his hair and shoulders as he comes.

Her legs are shaking, mirrored tremors that she can feel in his arms, and she pushes at him to stand on her own. He lets her go, and she turns to the wall, trying to find whatever cool she might have left. Her hair is plastered to her face. She’s wet and sloppy.He catches at her dress, slips it off her shoulders, dropping it to the floor. He unhooks her bra, and she’s naked, pressed back against him. He’s so warm, and the wall is cool, and her knees shake a little. 

She puts her hands on the wall, and he kisses her neck, teeth against her shoulder. She arches into his touch, pushes against him, needing more. He reaches around, thumb against her clit, fingers sliding inside of her, and fucks her with his fingers, pinching and circling, and she comes with a harsh cry and his palm holding her cunt like a present, other arm banded across her, between her breasts, keeping her steady.He breathes roughly against her, and she turns her head, kisses him.

“Jesus, Banner,” she says, low and unsteady, gripping his arm. “You’re still wearing that hideous jacket.”His laughter rolls through her, and she can feel the kiss he places on the back of her neck like an after-shock.

Eventually, she does strip him down, takes him to her small bed to sleep, to wake up, a little hung over, rolling him onto his back, and sinking down on top of him as early morning starts to beckon, gripping his hands while she takes her own pleasure, collapsing on top of him, rolling away. He sleeps like the dead, after, even if he does reach for her, hand curled on to her hip. She lets it stay.

She leaves him in the hotel room alone.When he wakes, He finds his phone next to him on the nightstand, along with a postcard of Krakow and a row of numbers.

 _I took the SHIELD tracker out. Call me if you want to be found. - N_.

 


	2. Rome

He calls Tony first, so glad that the bastard is alive after all. He’s been traveling a little, seeing some of Europe, keeping an eye on the news.

“Come home, Bruce,” Stark says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Bruce decide to give in.

“I’m giving a paper in Rome,” he says. “I’ll come back after.”

He knows calling her is foolish. She left the number for an emergency. He decides to risk it. He leaves her a message. “I’m gonna be in Rome. For a conference. I’ve never been there. I’ll buy you ice cream.”

Two hours later, a hotel reservation pops up in his email and his calendar has a date for 7 a.m.

He takes a night train to Rome, and barely makes it to the cafe on time, walking through the early morning streets with his bag, looking like he barely slept, and it feels sort of electric.

She’s standing at the glossy marble bar, and her hair is darker than when he’d last seen her. She’s wearing form fitting white jeans, a thin white top that hugs her breasts, and a long soft sweater that has a delicate spun sugar texture. He’s sure there’s a gun on her somewhere, but nothing breaks up the line of her body. Gold winks at her throat and in her ears. She looks Italian, smoldering, so damned beautiful that he doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he just walks up to her.

“Buon Giornio, Signorina,” he says, low, and she tilts towards him, smirks. She’s drinking espresso from a tiny cup. She orders him a cappuccino and a cornetto, finishes her drink. The coffee is so good it nearly makes him cry.

“I need to finish some things today,” she says. She hands him an old-fashioned brass key. “For the room. Go, sleep, give your paper. I’ll see you tonight.”

He catches at her hand. “Natasha…”

She strokes her thumb along his bottom lip, a gesture like a lover, and it feels like play acting but he still leans in to her touch.

She points up the hill. “It’s at the top. They’ll let you in.”

Her lips brush his cheek and she smells like bergamot, and opium-fueled fever dreams, a different perfume every time, but he can still smell the clean scent of HER underneath, the scent he knew first from her fear and now from her sex.

He watches her go, finishes his coffee, heads up the hill.

The only evidence of her presence is a small black bag of makeup in the bathroom, shampoo and soap in the shower that smells of sun, and olive oil, and dark citrus. There’s a white dress in the closet and sandals, but no bag. He thinks, if he looks hard enough, he’ll find a weapon hidden somewhere, maybe more than one, but he decides not to look.

He’s a little dizzy with fatigue, a little dazed at being here, and it feels okay, but he doesn’t like to get too compromised. He showers, uses her soap, closes his eyes for an hour or two.

She’s waiting for him when he gets back from the conference. He’d skipped cocktail hour, would have anyway, but the site of her sitting in an armchair in the room with one leg primly crossed over the other erases any niggling guilt at not socializing with colleagues.

She’s wearing the white dress that had hung in the closet, her arms and legs bare, clavicle a sleek outline. He catches just the faintest hint of a tan. He suspects it’s painted on, skin like that only burns, but she glows with good health, voluptuous, and patient and promising.

He feels, suddenly, and not unpleasantly, like prey.

“I didn’t mean to make you wait,” he says, and the slow unfurling of her smile stops him in his tracks.

It’s a bad idea, he thinks, this game. Warsaw had been one thing, an unforgettable night, sex and connection, mourning, and touch, and getting, for once, what he wanted when he hadn’t even know he wanted it.

That’s a lie, actually. Wanting her is effortless.

Knowing her, knowing what she is and still wanting her? The ease of that is what shocks him. His want doesn’t keep the fear at bay, shifts it instead so it feel like arousal, like a build instead of the sour sweat of desperation. The first time he saw her, he understood how you could want something and fear it too -- a return to a real life, the desperate revulsion of it mixed in and all of it wrapped in this lush, languid package of woman. Who not five minutes later pulled a gun on him, letting her fear work him as firmly and honestly as her charm had failed to do. Who was he kidding? Her charm had worked, it just wasn’t going to change his mind.

When they’d gone through the floor, she’d been the one he’d focused on. He wanted her to own her choices, her actions. He could see in her face that she had the capacity. Her fear as he started to shift, change, the way she fought it to try and talk him down? That had gone further than any amount of charm.

When he caught up to them in Manhattan, he’d wanted her to know that he understood. His apology wasn’t for changing, for the terror, but for blaming her. Since that moment, he’s seen her differently - the way she swallows both her desire and her fear, puts it all somewhere to use, more often than not against those who underestimated her. He counted himself amongst those people, although less than most, and he wanted out of that box.

He got more than he wanted in Poland, testing himself, and testing her and now, he’s teasing at something that he knows is likely to do him damage, risking his own damaged other half coming to bear.

But he looks at her in that dress, and thinks, maybe it’s worth it. That’s her trick, though, her illusion. Manipulation, interrogation, making him see what he wants to see. He looks again, tries to see more, and she’s still beautiful, heart-wrenchingly, epically so. But he also thinks she looks...tired.

She stands up, gold and white heeled sandals putting her close to his height. “I’m starving, Doc,” she says. “Get a move on.”

Despite her professed hunger, she wanders them through Trastevere, and they walk a little along the Tiber before ending up at a tiny Chinese restaurant.

“Trust me,” she says.

“Italy,” he says, “Pasta, wine, raw beef?”

“Trust me,” she repeats.

She orders for them and there’s a delight in hearing her order Chinese food in rolling Italian. The waitress brings them a giant beer to split and something on delicate lettuce leaves that’s so spicy he has to chug back his drink, watch as she struggles not to laugh.

He was in China once, briefly, and the food is far more reminiscent of that experience than American Chinese. Highly spiced, shared plates, and a heady feeling of exploration.

“Okay,” he says, eating something that could be shrimp, could be tongue and he’s not going to try and figure it out. He’s not squeamish, but a big part of that was not over-thinking your food options. “You’re right.”

“I promise you wine and gelato, though. It is Rome.”

He gives her a wide, open smile, and when she grins back, there’s a genuine happiness there that floors him. “You love it here,” he says.

He can see, just for a moment, that’s she’s folding that into herself, figuring out how to spin it. He can see, too, how she stops. She nods. “Yes.” She leaves it at that.

She keeps the conversation light, talk of his paper, the conference, a little of how it feels to be back in the fold of the scientific community. A little of Rome’s bloodier history.

He raises an eyebrow at the story of Fulvia stabbing Cicero through the tongue with her broach. “I learned Latin,” she says, “It seemed like context might be relevant. Besides, I like women who take offense.”

“There’s a tour of the Forum that the scientists were invited to tomorrow,” he says.

“You should go,” she says, “stand on the steps of the Senate and declaim.”

He laughs at that, eats a little more shrimp/tongue. “I’m not sure virologists are the best receptacles for historical anecdotes.”

“You’re not technically a virologist.”

“Physicists, then.”

“I don’t know. My understanding is that Physics looks at the world as overlapping sustaining motion, history folding around itself, happening all at once.”

“That’s a very...poetic way of looking at it.”

She winks at him, then shrugs. “Mostly, my Physics is of the equal and opposite reaction school, but I like scientific philosophy.”

He smiles at her, widely. “That sounds like Tony.” 

It’s her turn to tilt into that. “I was glad to hear that his death had been exaggerated.” She pauses. “Truly.”

“I owe a lot of…” he gestures around himself. “Being in the world, and not hidden, to Tony,” he says. There are so many opportunities to make amends, and some of them can be small moments and small things, even when you’re getting poked with a stick.

“Does that mean you’re going back to the playground?”

So shrewd, the mind behind that steady gaze. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“To Stark,” she says softly, and clinks her beer bottle with his. “And opportunity. May he live to annoy for years to come.”

“He mentions your tenure at Stark Industries fondly,” Bruce says, wanting to taunt her a little, to rile her. Besides, it fascinates him, the idea of her as a prim, sexy assistant. A spy under that persona, herself under both. A fantasy of powerful men and women. Telling them no with her mouth and yes with her body. The control and manipulation that act would require to always be a promise and never a reward. Tony had been very descriptive about the package that promise had been wrapped in, equally descriptive of his cold unease at watching her slip back and forth between roles. How ultimately, she’d saved him.

“God he was a nightmare,” she says, playing along, leans in, eyes wide and serious. “No Mr. Stark, here’s your drink Mr. Stark, don’t blow yourself up Mr. Stark you pompous asshole. Oh no, that’s not what I said at all.” She sits back. “But, to be fair, he was dying then too.”

He can’t imagine liking sultry Natalie nearly as much as he likes Natasha, even knowing that he’s getting at least half an act tonight as well. Natalie didn’t sound like one to make jokes about dying.

The gelato is everything he’d hoped for, down to watching her eat the dark chocolate and raspberry with a tiny spoon as they sat outside the gelateria and watched people stroll lazily through the back streets. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth,” she says, “but if you don’t eat gelato at Della Palma and feel just a little orgasmic, you’re simply not human.”

He has to agree, fruit of the forest melting on his tongue.

They end up at a wine bar on the other end of Trastevere, a small place almost underground that makes him a little nervous, but her confidence carries them through.

She orders a bottle of wine that cost more than their dinner and as it breathes, he asks how she was in Italy at the right time. “I made it work,” she says.

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Maybe I wanted to see you.” The lie is hollow, even if he detects some truth behind it.

He's suddenly weary. He’s willing to play, but he doesn’t want to be played.

“Bruce, these aren’t things you want to know,” she says, and it’s the most honest thing she’s said that night.

“You’ve been here for awhile.” He’s drawn the obvious conclusion since the morning coffee, but he’s no less curious. “So tell me the truth.”

The look she gives him is steady, calculating and he can see more of that earlier exhaustion flash behind her eyes, twist her mouth a little. He guesses she doesn’t have confidants, just handlers. He knows she and Barton are friends, but he thinks, knows, how lonely it is to carry all your secrets with you, to never unburden and her work seems so solitary.

“You don’t have to share details,” he says, “I’m not trying to compromise you.” That word again.

She looks past him, then meets his gaze. Moves a little closer, and he catches the way that olive and citrus soap translates on her fine skin, the way it’s deeper and muskier on him. He’s distracted by details.

“The thing in Warsaw became a thing in Monaco and then quickly became a thing here.”

“And tonight?”

She leans into him, like she’s going to kiss his cheek, whispers in his ear.

“To the left, at the table by the trompe l’oeil.”

He follows her instruction. The man is in his fifties. His companion is half his age, but they look happy.

“She’s selling the identities of intelligence agents to an organization that’s then selling them to Hyrda.”

He nods, puts his hand on her waist to encourage her to stay where she is, whispering deadly secrets in his ear. That he’s here as cover is now patently obvious. The bartender indicates that the wine is ready, pours for them both. She moves away to hand him his glass, and he can feel the loss of her presence.

The wine is dark and rich, an astonishingly dusky taste.

“That’s really good,” he says. She smiles, pleased and it reads as genuine.

He drinks more, puts his hand back on her waist, slides it down to her hip. She takes a sip of wine, and puts down the glass. She leans in, and kisses him with her hand on his face. She tastes like spice and wine, and herself and he’s starting to crave that taste.

She pulls back slightly. “My job is to identify her, capture her buyer, then prevent her from continuing her work.”

He doesn’t have any illusions about what that means.

“I’m very good at my job,” she says softly. There’s no emotion behind it, not even pride, and he suspects that she deserves to take pride in her efforts and skillset, even if it sickens him a little. She’s very still in his arms.

He wants, suddenly, to take her home, to take her away from this, unwrap her, tuck her into bed, stroke her hair, and kiss away the pain he sees in the set of her mouth and the clench of her fists.

It’s a ridiculous desire, twists his stomach. He’s not a caretaker, not a fool, and she would neither welcome those impulses nor indulge them. She doesn’t need that kind of care, but he wonders when the last time someone asked her what she actually wanted was.

They drink the wine. Her mark continues to get ever closer to the older man, rubbing his chest, making him laugh. Natasha narrates the girl’s strategy to him as she runs a hand along his thigh, and he brushes his lips along her neck, a pantomime of desire.

“She’s soothing him, riling him up, hinting at the things they’ll do later.”

It’s not unlike a narration of their evening.

“She’s not promising anything, keeps her distance. She needs him to want her, but he should want to chase her as much as catch her. She’s good at what she does, inching closer and moving away, antsy, like her pussy is on fire, like she doesn’t want him to know.”

He doesn’t remember the last time he touched someone like this, effortlessly, constantly, without fear, even if it’s a sham, and he lets himself be part of her story, the guy she’s acting like he is, a mark too, but in on the joke. Hands on her deliberately to tease, to play with the dual realities they’re working, revving her up for real and pretend.

There’s a moment, when he brushes the edge of her dress, fingers against her knee moving upwards along the inside of her thigh when the hitch in her voice sounds genuine and she loses her train of thought, just for a heartbeat. He wants to take ruthless advantage, push her. But she’s working, and he respects that.

She sighs into his hands as he withdraws, spans her waist instead of sliding against her pussy, holds her gently. She strokes his neck, kisses him again. More whispers. “He’ll be picked up by INTERPOL as soon as she leaves. He’s already given her five names, and not even known it. Idiot.” There’s a slavic twist to the slur. 

Finally, the girl rises, kisses her date on the cheek, moves towards the stairs, opening her clutch, pulling out a packet of cigarettes.

“Don’t go anywhere.” Natasha says to him. She’s still the same woman the room has been watching, moving after the girl, calling gently, asking to bum a smoke, loose and horny and tipsy. But her focus is so sharp he can read it in the sound of her soles striking the marble steps.

He continues to sip the wine, watching the older guy who doesn’t seem bothered by the absence, even when it stretches out past the length of a cigarette. Natasha returns a few minutes later. He smells the faintest trace of smoke in her hair, but her dress and shoes are pristine.

“We should go,” she says, but slides against him, slipping fingers along his waistband, nails dragging along his back, like she wants to ride the wine buzz into bed for a long, slow, night of fucking. The bartender gives him the Italian version of a subtle “Good for you, asshole.” He puts his arm around her, and kisses her for show. Her lips are cool, tongue stroking along his and she digs her nails into his back and runs her teeth over his lip, sighing against him. It’s sexy and horrifying, and he can feel the arousal run through him, answering both aspects.

“Let’s,” he says.

They take a taxi, and she sits as far away as she can. She’d started to tremble a little as they walked to the road. There was no sign of the girl. He takes her arm, steering her and she doesn't protest. By the time they get to the hotel, she’s shaking. He hustles her inside, genuinely worried.

“Did you get dosed?” he asks, “Are you hurt?”

“I’m not. It’s not...” she looks down, mouth twisting in disgust. “I don’t usually do this. It’s just, I haven’t slept. In awhile, and the adrenaline... you, maybe. Normally, I could just push into a corner. Ride it out. Get back in control.”

He grabs the coverlet off the bed, wraps it around her and shoves her down hard, rubbing her arms.

“I’m fine,” she says, patently lying.

“You’re not fine,” he says, and he doesn’t feel fine either, nervous, and unsettled, and he thinks she can see that run across his face, and she starts to shake harder, and says, “Fuck,” slams her fist against her thigh. It startles him enough to calm him down, and he grabs her hand and says, “Hey!” sharp enough to startle her back.

She looks up at him, eyes luminous, and all the adrenaline seems to drain out of her. “She was a kid,” she says, like it hurts her a little. “I don’t feel bad, but...she was barely an adult. Stupid. Sometimes it just hits you, out of nowhere. How stupid it is to get caught out.”

He doesn’t know what to do, so he just keeps rubbing her arms.

She laughs, and it’s so bitter he wants to put his hand over her mouth.

“Even with all this,” she says, and the hiccuping poison of the laugh is worse. “I’d still planned on fucking your brains out. You shouldn’t be nice to me.”

He wants to say that he's not being nice, but grips her upper arms, makes her look at him.

She pauses, finally takes stock, takes a deep breath. “I took the opportunity I had.” She doesn’t elaborate, and he thinks she’s got the capacity to mean both things - fucking and killing, figuring out how to contain both.

“That’s pretty fucked up,” he says. Sits down beside her.

She leans against him, just a little. “You’d have liked it.”

He puts his arm around her. “Undoubtedly.”

The shivering is getting a little less violent, but he keeps rubbing her arm. He's not sure what the protocol is, here, tries to think of what might have any kind of meaning.

“What would you do?” he asks, finally. “If I weren’t here. If it were just you, and nobody watching?”

She shrugs. Takes it into consideration. “Take a bath. Get a little drunk. Read Italian Vogue, maybe get myself off. Try to sleep for a few hours. I need to not be in Rome tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” he says. Gets up.

The bath is easy, tub big enough for her small frame, and he just dumps a bunch of the olive oil shampoo in for bubbles, weighs down the telephone hose so it fills the basin.

“I’ll be back,” he gestures to the open door of the bathroom.

She just looks at him, blinking, like she’s not sure what’s happening. He pulls her to her feet, strips off the coverlet, and turns her around to unzip the dress. He slides it off her body, and it clings, and he has to fight against running his mouth down her back as he goes, peeling it down over her hips for her to step out of it. She’s that same smooth, hardly a tan color all over, and he hadn’t properly gotten to see her in full light last time.

She raises her ankle, curling it towards her ass to undo her sandal, sways a little and he can’t help the drift of his fingertips over her skin as he stills her, kneels to help with the shoe, one then the other. She makes a low noise in her throat, and he skims his fingertips gently up the back of her thighs as he stands, nudges her to turn around. Her underwear is pale, a warm peachy skin tone, too lovely to be beige, so thin it’s transparent, and she looks ripe in it, more naked than she would stripped down fully. He can tell that her cunt is bare, a marked contrast to last time when a small v of curls had beckoned to him. Inhabiting someone all the way down to personal grooming, he thinks.

“Get in the bath,” he says. She does.

There’s a newsstand on the corner that sells everything. He hauls it back in a plastic sack, knocks on the door to the bath to hand her the magazine, a Heineken, and the bathrobe from the hotel closet.

He lays back on the bed, and watches Young Frankenstein dubbed into Italian, drinks his own beer in a t-shirt and his boxers.

That he’s soothing a killer is not really something that bothers him as much as he suspects it should. 

When she gets out of the bath, wrapped in the heavy hotel robe, she looks unbearably young and unbearably beautiful and for a minute, he feels like a dirty old man. But she’s not a child. She never has been. He’s seen enough of her file to know that. She crawls over to the bed, climbs up in it, and looks at him. Her gaze is shrewd, and the earlier sultry play has gone out of it, and all thoughts of her youth flee. Her eyes are ageless, knowing. She’s not shaking anymore, and whatever she did tonight, she’s internalized it. For all that, she looks clear, present, like the woman he saw looking back at him across dust and rubble and a borrowed motorcycle.

“I changed my mind,” she says. He looks around, trying to figure out what she’s talking about. “In the bath, I thought about it a lot. I might have tested the waters, so to speak.”

He can feel his cheeks flush at the thought of her stroking herself, possibly rolling the beer bottle over pert nipples. Slipping her fingers between her legs in the hot water, gripping her bottom lip with her teeth. 

“And,” he says softly.

“I’d like you to get off, instead,” she says. “And I’d like to watch.”

Any other night and he’d have laughed, or left, or tried to shake it off, but it makes a weird kind of sense. He’s seen her vulnerable, twice now, not to mention trying to kill her although he thinks that’s behind them, and she wants the same, no matter the risk. Reciprocity. And the truth is, it’s no more intimate, unbearable than having her see him change, lose control and become something dangerous and monstrous. Less than human.

“Please,” she says.

“Okay,” he says, slowly. Gives in.

She’s a master spy, and her face doesn’t betray any surprise. Instead, a warm, slow, genuine smile spreads across her face. She rises up on her knees, moves towards him, and puts her hands on his face, kisses him gently. He opens his mouth under hers, hands on her hips, drinks her in, and feels lost in it, his desire, her taste and scent, the insanity of it.

“Take off your clothes,” she says, and sits back on her heels. He stands, peels off the t-shirt, the shorts, puts his glasses on the table, and feels foolish and naked until he sees her pupils contract. She licks her lips, and reaches for the tie of her robe. She undoes the knot so it falls open, but doesn’t strip it off and it’s as sexy as the tight white dress.

“I think,” his voice doesn’t sound like his own, and he’s gotta keep from nerves, keep it about giving her something. “I’m gonna need...lubrication. There’s some in my bag.”

She grins at him, and he climbs back on the bed as she roots around in his things, throws him a twist and tag capsule. She stretches out on the opposite end of the bed, head propped on her arm, which rests on a pillow and watches him like some sort of jungle creature.

He’s spent a lifetime staying out of anyone’s predatory gaze, keeping still, keeping to himself and now she wants to see him exposed, and it was the twist to that please, the desire threading through that tugged at him, brought him here.

He snaps open the plastic, like a twist of jam, and it smells like bananas, but doesn’t taste like anything and is thick and less like hair gel than other products he’d experienced. You do a lot of self-gratification in foreign countries and you get to know their preferences in lube. Banana gel is a damn site better than yak butter.

He’s willing, if uncomfortable, but he’s damned if he knows how to start.

She reaches out and strokes along the arch of his foot, puts her fingers on the bone of his ankle and her heat seeps up his leg like it’s her mouth instead of just a moment of touch. He squeezes some of the gel into his hands, and rubs them together, and she lets one knee curl towards her and the robe slides open so that her hip is bare. 

That helps. He takes one tentative stroke along his cock, feels a little distant from himself and the experience. The slickness, the strangeness, helps, but he’s not sure he can get himself hard enough, until she says, husky, and certain. “I don’t care if you close your eyes, what you think of,” she says kindly. “I just want to see how you make yourself feel better.” 

“Natasha,” he groans, and strokes himself harder this time, squeezing just a little. “How could I possibly think of anything else but you right now?”

“Oh,” she says, and there’s some real surprise there, and he thinks again, of wanting to wrap around her, share that distance and pain.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he says, honest because that’s no less embarrassing than fisting his cock in front of her. “And you fucking terrify me.”

Her smile is catlike, dreamy now.

Her hand is still on his ankle, thumb rubbing around the bone in this smooth, distracting pass like she doesn’t even know that she’s doing it, but it’s still vibrating up his spine.

“I’ve never had a chance to watch,” she says. “When I touch myself, it’s usually quick. I don’t usually have time to really stretch it out.” 

“Tell me,” he says, feels the jump, the amping up. He scratches his nails across his chest, along the inside of his thigh.

“I know what I like,” she says, her voice heavy, still dreamy like she’s entranced by what she sees. “I like fingers on my clit, sliding inside, pinching my nipples. I can tell when I’m close, and when it’s just not gonna happen. Lately,” she says, scrapes her nails along his ankle with just the right pressure, like she’s learning by watching, and he reaches down to cup his balls, fingers still slick with lube.

“I think about you looking at me, my hands behind my head while you just stared, and I could tell how hard you were, even in the dark. I could see what you wanted, and I couldn’t imagine how you could keep yourself from touching me. Letting me touch you.”

He’s faster now, varying the tempo and grip, and he can see her - the deliriously erotic picture she’d made, the false surrender as she let him take his time. 

“I know you’re very, very good at waiting,” she says, “that you understand control.” 

He nods.

“That you have to.” 

She bites her lip. “But part of you also likes it.”

His belly clenches, and she blinks, slowly. 

“Jesus,” she says, “I’m wet just thinking about it.” She sinks down, rolls on her back, keeps watching him, slips her hand under his ankle, and puts her knees up. “How much I’d like to push you past that edge, shake your control. Just enough.”

The robe is open, her breasts and bare cunt and the flat of her stomach. Her fingers drift, brush against her lips, darting, but she keeps watching him. He can’t keep focused, so distracted by what he wants to do to her, cover her body, sink into her so slowly and deeply that they both feel the thrust in their spines.

“Just enough,” she repeats. “I don’t want you compromised, just...rattled.”

He needs to come, to get this over with. “I don’t think you’d like that.”

She bites her lip. “Oh, I think I would,” she says. “I really do. And I think you would to. I think you’d like to be riled up by someone who knows what you can do, who you could really let go with.”

It’d be a taunt if she didn’t sound so wanton, and he can tell, by the way fire licks through his body, that she knows what she’s doing, and that she’s right. He knows how to ride this edge on his own. How delicious would it be? To ride it with her, take her to the edge of that fear, and fuck it away instead of trying to kill her.

“Think about it,” she says, but her voice is trembling, and it’s all too much for him to think about.

He speeds up, closes his eyes, and pumps his fist, cups his balls. He doesn’t notice that her hand is off his foot until he feels the wet heat of her mouth on the tip of his cock, her fingers banding with hers as she cups him, and it’s almost nothing to come as she slides her mouth over him, pressure and suction and the brush of her hair, and the warm, citrusy, sunshine scent, and her. Just her.

He shouts with the intensity, hand going slack, as his hips jerk, and she circles the base of him tightly, taking him in, tongue flat against his shaft, swallowing as he pulses in her throat.

He comes back to himself with her head on his thigh, and his fingers threaded through her hair.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes out. “Come here.”

She crawls up to her knees, and sheds the robe, straddles his waist, and he pulls her down on to his chest, puts his hand on her back and tugs the coverlet over them.

She’s gone when he opens his eyes an hour later. Another post-card this time. Fulvia’s broach on the front. 

_Go to the Forum. Yell loud enough to scare them. - N_

He reads the morning paper as he drinks coffee. No mention of the girl, but the old guy had indeed been taken into custody. 

He goes to the Forum with the scientists, and stands on the senate steps, and looks out, hoping for a glimpse of red hair. Then he gets on a plane to go back to Tony.


	3. Zagreb

“Side project,” she says, although she’s wearing her uniform. Barton hadn’t received a mission brief, so it was either a side interest or a side bar.

He brought the bow even though she didn’t think he’d need it. You don’t leave your tools behind in the truck.

She’d come back from Italy quiet and focused, and they didn’t really push each other because that’s not what they did. So he didn’t ask, but she’d been gone for awhile, in Europe and out of it, and Fury seemed pleased but Natasha was just...quiet. Contained, like she was making a decision. He dragged her away one weekend to hang out with Laura and the kids, and she finally told him that she’d seen Banner. Twice. That she’d finished her mission, and that he’d been there, that she’d used him and that she’d freaked out although Natasha didn’t say it that way. But he knew her, and she was human. Contained, inscrutable, but capable, like all of them, of having a quiet, deserved freakout after a difficult assignment.

“We take the opportunities that are presented to us,” he quoted at her, a little like a taunt, but it really was a mantra.

“Yes,” she’d said, “but sometimes, we should look for better opportunities.”

She didn’t really have tells, which made her miserable to play cards with, but she would tuck her head down sometimes, working something out in a way that made him want to put his hand on the back of her neck, like a weight, to help absorb some of the pressure.

“He didn’t ask to be used. He hates being used,” she said, “and he let me do it anyway.”

“That’s...interesting,” Barton said, a little lost, but kind of getting it. Sometimes when she’d ask, you’d say yes even when you meant no.

“I don’t want to do that again,” she said, “Unless he knows ahead of time, can say yes then.”

“Nat,” he says, “that sounds a whole lot more like fucking than work.”

She just gave him this look that said, “Who was talking about work?”

He decided that was probably as much as he needed to know.

“Vacation,” she shouts through the headset, grumpy but sort of pleased at the same time, as she pulls up on the steering and the helicopter takes off, “was supposed to mean a beach and umbrella drinks and a stack of mystery novels.”

He’s pretty sure her vacation plans had included kidnapping a scientist and using him to do her bidding, but he didn’t press the point.

“You burn, you hate grenadine, and you always guess the endings and then throw the book across the room because you’re right.”

The helicopter tilts to the left, and he really hates to let her drive when she’s in a mood, but it’s not worth an argument that she’ll win anyway. He’s a much better fixed-winged pilot, but she’s killer with rotational force.

“I bought a bathing suit,” she said. “It’s green, and strappy and French and covers almost nothing, and I was going to wear it and drink umbrella drinks and read novels and buy souvenirs.”

“This is a better plan,” he shouts into the headset with a grin.

“Maybe,” she answers back.

***

Banner just looks confused when Clint shows up. He also looks like he hasn’t slept for a week, hair all over the place, shirt wrinkled and sweaty.

He opens his mouth, closes it, and then gives Clint this kind of wry, dark smile.

“You my present?”

He shows Clint the phone. It just says “Happy Birthday.”

“At your service, Doc. She said you needed someone to keep an eye on things.”

Banner sighs, gives him a rundown on the viral outbreak, and the kind of instant chaos and looting it was causing. The virus is transmitted mostly by fluids, and in this section of the city, there’s a high percentage of drug use and sex workers. But also kids, families who can’t afford better. They don’t know if it’s in the water, or just part of the typical pattern of transmission.

“We’ve seen the virus before. It’s been manufactured, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how it’s being introduced. It wouldn’t be hard, but it should be traceable. The CDC can’t find patient zero, and I thought I could help with containment, but it’s hard to contain it when these people are worried about their homes being looted and burned.”

Clint looks around at the camp that’s been set up to treat those too ill to take care of themselves, and to keep them from spreading the disease.

“Seems like this might be an avoidable high-stress situation.” He doesn’t say it as a challenge, just like, “Huh, look at that.”

“I was in Romania. They thought I’d have some insight, but I don’t know a fucking thing I didn’t know five days ago.”

He sounds tired, and a little fractured.

“Tell me what to do.”

Mostly what he ends up doing is organizing some better patrols, and setting up a perimeter, and hauling shit around for Banner and his team and cursing out Natasha because the team was testing the temporary vaccine on rats, who made him break out in hives, but so far he hadn’t gotten sick.

He hands out blankets and coffee, and tries to get people to stop drinking their tap water, but there’s not quite enough of the bottled to go around because the U.N. had closed the airspace, until a big shipment arrives via freighter from the Stark Foundation along with more tents and volunteers, and then things start to get a little better.

In fact, mostly the virus stops spreading, and the team’s vaccine is still unstable and unpredictable but it feels like it’s going in the right direction, and there hasn’t been a break in at the hospital or makeshift recovery center in the town hall tonight.

Banner leans against one of the folding tables they’d set up in the camp and rubs his eyes. He’s more calm than Barton would have expected, like having something to fight helps to contain the rage, and he can see what she likes about him. He’s hyper-focused and smart and sarcastic and kind of pissy and kind. She’s a huge sucker for kind. And he never asks why it’s Barton hauling shit around and scaring the locals and being a test monkey and not her.

On the fourth day he’s there, the team declares the virus contained. They haven’t had a new outbreak in 36 hours. It’s the longest they’ve gone without incident by nearly a day. They still don’t have a patient zero, or a source for the virus, but it’s still a victory.

He’s been taking cat-naps, but Banner’s still dead on his feet, and Clint shuffles him to a tented area where the Stark volunteers had set up a camp for the doctors and medical workers. He’s got his own tent, and he just sort of mumbles something at Clint and lifts up the flap to go in, and then stops.

Natasha is passed out on his sleeping bag, messy and a little bloodstained, and drooling and Banner gets this look on his face like he’s gonna just let her sleep there because he can’t not, like he’d stand guard and just wait for her to wake up even if she slept forever.

Clint snorts. “She looks so harmless when she’s like that,” he says.

“I don’t think she’d be harmless in a coma,” Banner says, but his voice is soft.

Clint nudges her foot a lot less gently than he’d like to because he’s seen her sleep like that before and it’s come down from a mission and a kill, not simple fatigue. She sits up, eyes clear, gun drawn. Blinks, sees them both, holsters the Glock and gets up. There’s a long angry cut along the side of her throat, and she holds the gun like it hurts her hands, and he watches Banner track the injuries, eyes getting dark.

“We good?” she asks them both, like she wasn’t just wiping her face, and grimacing.

Clint nods, and Bruce just looks at her, and there’s a little flush that spreads across her cheeks from his gaze.

“Postcard?” he asks.

“In your bag,” she says. His mouth crooks to the side, like he’s both pleased and a little pissed off.

“What’s it say?”

“Wish we were here.”

“Very poetic.”

“Here,” she says, and hands him a flash drive. “For your team. And your peace of mind. It’s been...contained. Permanently.”

“Natasha,” he says, and she shakes her head.

“Vacation’s over,” she says, “the bathing suit went to waste. It was green,” she’s deliberately wistful, “and strappy and French.” 

And she sounds sad, like she’s losing something, like she’s been playing a long con, but real too and he wants to pull her out of the tent, shake her a little because this is such a bad fucking idea, for both of them. Banner’s looking at her like he wants to yell at her, or fuck her blind, or just hold on really tight.

He moves towards her finally, gets close enough that Clint can’t hear what he says, mouth against her ear, hand hovering over her hip, like he’s afraid to touch her in the uniform but it’s taking all his focus to remember that.

She doesn’t do anything sappy, but he can see her fingers brush over Banner’s hand as she leaves, and he doesn’t turn around to watch her walk away, but curls his hand into a fist like he needs to protect himself.

They’re leaving the city by Jeep, and when she lets him drive, he just gives her a look, and she shakes her head. 

“You’re right,” she says, “I’d have never made it to the pool.”


	4. Moscow

She doesn’t feel at home in Moscow, but she doesn’t feel at home anywhere right now. Her whole life is compromised, every moment of it. She told Rogers that she was going to figure out who she was, but that keeps meaning a battle with her past. Literally.

She’s backed herself into a corner of the hotel room, exhausted and spent and drowning under the weight of bad choices. How the fuck do you figure out who you are when everything wants to kill you? When maybe it should?

The knock on the door is sharp, like whoever is on the outside is pretty sure the room is empty. And then it comes again, tentative. She holds the Glock out in front of her, back pressed against the wall, but when she says come in, her voice hardly shakes at all.

She keeps the gun up as he enters the room. He can’t see her, but he puts his hands up anyway, and when he closes the door, he locks all the locks.

He puts down the bags in his hands, and takes off his coat, and his shoes and the scarf around his neck. His hair is standing up, ruffled and stiff from the plane and the snow, sweat and restless sleep, and his glasses are foggy, and she’d weep with the pleasure of seeing him if she did that kind of thing.

He walks around in a circle, like he's giving her space and time, and she keeps the gun up, until he finally turns around to look at her. There’s a tremor of anger riding in his dark eyes, but she doesn’t think it’s directed at her.

He squats down, like reaching out to a stray, and she lowers the gun, and puts her head back against the wall, closes her eyes, slides down to the floor, and doesn’t move until he’s sitting next to her.

She’s not sure what to do next, uncomfortable with touch outside of sex, outside of working an angle, but then so is he, so often removed, distancing himself for safety, but she thinks she could climb into his lap if she weren’t so tired. His thigh is against hers, knees up, mirroring her posture, and he's looking straight ahead.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, just sits there with her, his compassion like a weight and it’s the most intimate moment she can clearly remember having with another person that didn’t involve life or death or them bleeding out at her hands. 

“Are you hungry?”

She realizes, finally, that she is. Nods.

He gets up and spreads out a blanket on the floor of the small room. He’s got a feast in his bag - piroshki and honey cake and cooling borscht and kvass, which makes her laugh because he keeps smelling it like it’s going to smell less like a deli.

“Why Moscow?” he asks, as she sits across from him, cross-legged, and she likes that because she thinks anyone else would assume she was trying to come home.

“Unfinished business,” she says, doesn’t mention that the business is burning the final traces of her past, seeing if there’s anything left to tie the Winter Soldier to this world, a gift for Rogers, a reprieve for herself. Plus, she had things stashed here, from so far back and the punishment of being in the city, retrieving them at risk appealed to her. It was such a beautiful place, bright and barren, and she couldn’t trust a moment of memory here.

Which made it even worse that she was trapped here, none of her aliases to save her, too many faces she knew, that knew her, and the risk had been stupid. She wasn’t used to being anything but competent.

The two sources she had that should have been last resorts were dead.

His text had been from an unknown number, nothing traceable, and she knew Stark had helped with that. So simple. “Are you okay?” She had known it was him.

She thought about ignoring it, and knew, when she replied “Yes” that he’d come. She’d seen that look in his eyes, in Rome, the way touch and need had flared together, the way he’d forced her honesty, answered her request, found truth in himself. 

The way he’d whispered into her ear in the tent in Zagreb, and she could feel anger and need and shaky control in his breath. “I’d peel that bathing suit off,” he’d said, “and kneel down, put my mouth on you, lick you until you fell apart.” Want and punishment, and he couldn’t help riding along her breaking point, like this thing between them was the closest either of them were ever going to get to love so it made sense to make the most of it.

He wanted to make her clean, she thought, but he loved that she was tarnished. He could see himself in that grime and blood. Knew her for what she was.

The girl in Rome had barely struggled when Natasha had put her hands on her neck. “They’ll kill me,” she’d said. Natasha had nodded. There was no more information to be gathered. The girl had seen in Natasha’s eyes that this wasn’t a pleasure. Moving the body had taken more effort than the kill. And then she’d texted Hill. “It’s done.”

The body was gone before she and Bruce left the wine bar, and then that extraordinary night had followed, opening himself to her like a gift despite the blood on her hands.

In Croatia, the kill had been far less clean, but then so had the intent. She knew he wouldn’t thank her for that.

“How did you find out?” she asked, drinking the Kvass, which was still hot and tearing through the soft dough of the piroshki. They aren’t comfort foods, feel as foreign and exotic as the Chinese food in Italy. She longs for a kitchen full of produce and meat, putting together simple things. 

“Stark,” he said. “He called me from California, made me turn on the TV.”

He tells her about watching her at the hearings, and she can hear the pride in his voice, and she hates it. What’s pride when she’s fighting for her life?

“Steve moved in to the Tower,” he says. “We’re rattling around, occasionally knocking in to each other. It’s weird. He’s a little lost, right now.”

She nods. She thinks he’s probably going to be lost for awhile, but he’ll get back his purpose soon enough.

“Come back,” Bruce says softly. “You don’t have to live there, but come back. We’re a good team, and you’re part of it.”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says, but it sounds like not yet.

She keeps watching her ledger unfurl across an international stage, everything she’s done, so much bad, and the small goods, things classified and buried. She doesn’t know how he can keep looking at her.

Part of her wishes it were Clint sitting across from her, but he’s safe, and staying out of the spotlight, protecting his family, and she’s given him everything she can to make that happen, which means that she’s in the cold, both compromised and fucked.

“Why are you here?” They keep asking each other, looking for an answer that makes sense.

He drinks more of the Kvass. Looks at her with this dark, shrewd honesty. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

That hangs between them for a few minutes. She swallows. “Thank you.”

He cleans up the picnic, and goes to the window, looks outside. It’s snowing, and it’s cold, and there’s nothing more desolate than a Russian winter. He looks...appropriate standing there as the light thins, dark hair and dark eyes, and a steady set to his mouth. Brooding like a Tolstoy prince. He’s not quite bulky enough but he’s got the rage and the destruction to keep him warm, so that’s something.

She goes to stand by him. Huffs on the glass, draws an x in the fog that covers the Bolshoi in the distance like she’s marking it for attack. She rented this room so she could see it. He fiddles with her hair, tugging a little and it feels good, an answer to the tension that radiates off of her. It’s a clean feeling, and she realizes that’s part of it. When she stands next to him, negotiates his intense gaze, and his rage, and his need, and his fear, she feels clean in his regard.

“I could use a shower,” he says. “I just got on a plane, and came, and Aeroflot is kind of awful.”

She runs the water in the tiny bathroom because the spigot is tricky, and when he comes in, she moves to go, but he catches her hand. 

“It’s so cold,” he says. “This will warm you up.”

She nods. “There’s not much hot water. It’ll have to be together.”

“I think I’ll survive,” he says, but not in a mean way, not lascivious, gentle like he wants to be a gentleman.

She pulls her heavy wool sweater over her head, and he shucks off his oxford and undershirt, and she feels very vulnerable all of a sudden, feet chilled and bare on the white tile as condensation start to bead on the mirror, columns of steam moving lazily, her nipples puckering under the lace and silk of her camisole.

“You have the most ridiculous underwear,” he says. 

“Silk under wool,” she says, rolling her eyes, “Is hardly ridiculous.”

“Decadent, then,” he says. “Your underwear is decadent.”

She thinks he’s probably seen a lot more cotton and polyester than hand-made French work. When she wears her uniform, it’s always government issue. Everything he’s seen before has been in character. This is something she loves. She takes his hand, puts it on her waist, lets him feel the deep, lush grain of the silk. He turns his hand over, sweeps the back of his fingers up her side, brushing her breast with the lightest of touches, like he’s trying not to and can’t help himself.

“Decadent,” he whispers, and she laughs, a little throaty, but feels the edge of it break, and continues to strip.

There’s no fancy soap this time, just a harsh local brand, and she scrubs herself, tries not to get her hair wet, admires the line of his throat as he tilts it back to rinse his hair. They brush against each other in the small space, but it’s companionable, nothing intrusive, asking for nothing. Just two people hurrying before they run out of heat. 

She likes the way his hair curls as he roughs it with the towel, likes the lean stretch of his arm and waist and chest. She likes him. He watches her as she dries herself, and says, “What?” and she just shakes her head. She feels like time is slowing down. She’s so weary, hasn’t been able to sleep, moving from place to place until finally, she got here, got past the concierge, knew if she had to keep running in the street, she was going to get killed. She’d sent Barton the coordinates, knew if he’d been able to get anyone to her, that he’d pass it on.

“When’s the last time you slept,” he asks softly. She shrugs. 

“How about a nap?”

She looks at him. Spies don’t nap. They pass out when they can, but they don’t nap. “When I was a kid, in the winter, coming in from outside, a hot shower, a cat nap. It made me feel safe.”

She knows his childhood was anything but safe. The window in the bathroom is fogged but snow dusts the edges, she opens the window and cold air and snow spills in.

"I remember taking the train here as a child," she says, "snow along the tracks to visit my aunt. How quiet it was. I'd close my eyes, jerk them open, afraid I'd miss the station."

His shrewd gaze tells her that he knows at least a little of her history. “It’s not real,” she says, “I know it’s not, but here...it’s hard to not let myself remember it anyway.”

He shrugs. “We take the lies we can and make them fit,” he says.

“Okay,” she says. “Fine, we’ll nap.” 

She pulls him into bed with her, scratchy sheets and layers of hotel blankets under the duvet. It's like being tucked into an igloo, hidden away from the world.

He looks at her, moves a stray curl away from her eyes. 

“How do you do it?” she asks suddenly. “The airplane. All of a sudden, you’re travelling the world.”

“Not all of a sudden,” he says, “I’d been travelling the world, just more slowly. And I still hate it.”

“So how?"

He flushes a little. “I listen to stuff. Feynman’s lectures, Tony reading a Chilton manual like porn to try and get me to care about mechanics, chefs’ biographies, Lord of the Rings. Podcasts.”

She puts her hand on his chest, and he curls his palm around it. “When I was a kid, I’d listen to records all night,” he said. "I had this old turntable that you could stack a bunch of records on. They’d drop down, one after another. My mom would line them up, and then I couldn’t hear my folks fight. I’d listen until I could sleep, all the first sides of all these stories.”

His mouth twists, sardonic, like sharing this story is something to be ashamed of.

She can’t imagine anyone trying to offer her even cold comfort as a child, or shield her from a brutal reality, and she wonders if the lack of it was better than a false sense of security destroyed from inside.

“Anyway, I still just tune out, focus on the words, and try to let the rest of it disappear. There’s still stress, but it’s this cold thing, buried.”

“Does it work?” she asks.

“I’m here now,” he says.

She cups his cheek, thinking of him sinking deeper into his isolation to keep people around him safe, breaking free to bring her to safety. She thinks of his hands on her, rubbing blood back into her limbs as she went shocky in Rome. She kisses him as softly as she can. She can taste his surprise. She didn't know she had that kind of gentleness inside herself, and clearly, neither did he.

It’s surprisingly sweet after that, his mouth moving against hers, equally gentle, but not soft. She tastes his want, hands on his waist, fingers slipping inside her, and she holds his shoulders as he holds her hips, rocks into her so deep and slow that she arches her back, rolls through his thrust, and it’s so, so good. They move together, languid, unhurried, until there’s a point where she thinks she’ll die if he doesn’t hurry a little.

She nips his jaw, his throat, slips her hand between their bodies to stroke herself and he speeds up, angles her hips to hit the right spot and then she cries out, surprise and pleasure rippling through her, clutching around him, and he comes as she clings to him.

She does sleep then, briefly. When she wakes up, he’s watching her. “I thought you just vanished when I closed my eyes,” he jokes, although it’s corny foolishness, “so I thought I’d catch you at it.”

She rolls her eyes, gets out of bed to put her clothes back on, finds her boots and jacket. He gets dressed as well, and then undoes some sort of compartment in his bag, and takes out three slim compact RFID-blocking grey packets.

He hands them to her one at a time. 

“From Barton.” A passport, a matching battered ID card, and more Euros. It’ll get her out of Russia. 

“From Stark.” It’s a wafer slim phone. “No tracking in it, he promised.”

She’ll take it apart later, but right now, she’d rather Stark tracked her than someone else. 

“From Steve.” 

It’s a photo, and a note, folded up, coordinates written in Nick Fury’s unmissable scrawl.

“You should see some of the city,” she says.

The snow has come down so thickly that even Moscow is quiet. She’ll take a train out tonight, leave the parts of her past behind to rot. She doesn’t need them anymore.

He looks at her as he puts his coat back on. “Come back,” he says again. “We can use you.”

Use is different than need, and she’s just not ready.

“Thank you,” she says, and reaches up to kiss his cheek.

There’s a cafe close to the train station that she takes him to. They walk by the Bolshoi, glowing at night, and he holds her hand because she lets him, and because she likes the way he grips her like he doesn’t want to lose her in a crowd. She orders him tea at the cafe, and tells him she’ll be right back.

A waiter hands him a postcard a few minutes later. “From the red haired woman,” he says, although it’s unnecessary, and Bruce looks down at a photo of Anna Pavlova, reclined as the swan.

Her initial is the only thing that graces the back.


	5. London

The party is boring, if elegant. A big English country house in the middle of nowhere with an industrial kitchen, lots of fancy dresses and tuxedos and self-important people, and he’d only come with Tony because he’d wanted to consult with Dr. Foster about her experience with the portals and the Bifrost. She’s remarkably adept at turning personal experience into scientific data, and besides, he likes her. Stark was getting an award for something, a man of the hour honor that even Tony couldn’t really remember the name of, and he’d bullied Bruce into coming with him to the party since Pepper was back at the hotel with the flu.

He’s drinking champagne and not talking to anyone because he doesn’t know anyone or feel like getting to know anyone when he sees a flash of red hair. It happens all the time in New York, that jolt of ginger, so bright in the sun, and he always wants to raise his hand, call her name, even when he knows it can’t be her.

She’d sent him another postcard, two weeks after he got back -- a beach on the Black Sea, totally out of season, with the new phone number in the form of an equation he had to solve. He kept them all, tucked into his Principia Mathematica. He thought she’d like that, as much as he liked the gesture. She had to know Tony would give him the phone number, had in fact programmed it to be Avogadro’s number, although he did it with this frown that screamed, “I’m doing this against my good judgement” and for Tony, that was saying something. But he knew she was making an effort.

He doesn’t think about it again, the flash of bright hair or at least he pretends, falling into a stilted, endless conversation with an older woman who served on the board that was honoring Tony, even though she seemed somewhat disapproving.

“He flies about in an Iron Suit,” she says, “Declaiming. Destroying things. But he has done good work. And you, young man. Do you have an iron suit as well?”

“No,” he says, demuring. “All you get with me is me.”

He moves away, out into the hallway, and finds himself pushed into a corner as a caterer walks by with canapes, and when he looks down at who’d shoved him, he sees Natasha. He puts his hand on her back to steady her, and she pushes close. She’s wearing something black and long and lovely, skin very pale and creamy, baring her shoulders and her cleavage. Her red hair is caught up on her head, and she’s breathing a little fast, like she’s winded.

She doesn’t say hello, just grabs his hand. “Stark’s being poisoned. Find him. Make him drink this.”

He stutters her name, and she shakes her head, and another wave of waiters comes by and she’s gone. He doesn’t stop to think, because she doesn’t make mistakes, and finds Tony being held up by two men at at a small side bar.

“Overindulged,” one says, looking snooty, and Bruce grabs him, shoves the vial into his hand. “Drink this,” he hisses, and then hustles him through the crowd onto the terrace.

20 minutes later, Tony’s thrown up several times over the side of the railing into the bushes below, and he’s grey and clammy, but he’s not dead. The cold is bracing. Stark’s pulse beats steadily, and Bruce wants to get some electrolytes into him and get him to a clinic, even though Tony keeps waving him off.

It’s only then that events start to process for Bruce. He looks down at his hand, which had been sticky, but he hadn’t thought much about it. 

“Tony,” he says, voice sounding hollow. “Are you bleeding?”

Stark shakes his head.

“Fuck,” he says. They need to find a doctor, he needs to find her. 

“That phone,” Bruce says, “I know there was a tracker.” 

Stark nods. He gets JARVIS to track the phone, and they’re lead to a small second kitchen tucked near the basement, nearly empty. She’s in a corner with her gun, and he’s getting tired of seeing her damaged and hiding in corners.

She’s barely coherent, and he picks her up. Her back is wet with blood. “Bullet,” she hisses. “Lower ribs.”

“Shooter?” he asks. It feels reasonable, and feels better than the roar of rage pounding in his temples.

“Stables,” she says. “Not a threat. Not now.”

He shoves her at Tony. “Hold her up,” he says. 

Tony complies, and Bruce ruthlessly yanks down the zipper on her side to pull the dress down to her hips. Her rib has shattered, and he can tell the bullet is still there, maybe in her lung, maybe buried in some other soft vital organ. He doesn’t really want to try and dig it out, but she’s still bleeding so much, and he can feel the rage boiling, at her for the risk, at himself for the impotence of not being able to help, at whoever had done this to her.

She’s sort of balancing against Tony who is honestly trying to hold her up and not fall down himself, and not actually grope her, and she slurs. “Ankle. Knife. Get this fucking bullet out of me and I’ll heal.”

“Nearest hospital is half an hour away,” Tony says. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“No,” he says. “I’m not…”

She kind of kicks at him and collapses at the same time, and he grabs her feet as Tony holds her under the arms, and they get her out of the dress and onto the cold, pristine surface of the metal table. He can smell industrial grade cleaner. The place has been ruthlessly scrubbed.

Goosebumps flare across her skin which is starting to go a little gray. The knife is strapped to her thigh like every high school spy fantasy wet dream, and he grabs it because it’s the right size for the task. Her underwear is this dusky navy satin that curves around her body, and he resists the urge to cut them apart, ruin them because he can, because the satin shouldn’t still be so pristine when her body is breaking down like this. The dress had soaked up a lot of the blood. 

She’s breathing more shallowly, and then it’s kind of a roaring blur--the kitchen is not a terrible emergency theater. There are gloves for the kitchen staff, pots and a stove for boiling water and hot towels. Tony babbles a running commentary of “keep it together, keep it together, here I’ll hold this, and Jesus Fucking Christ. Spies.“ They clean her back, and Tony calls the EMTs, and finds a first aid kit while Bruce sterilizes the knife, tries to keep one hand on her - his or Tony’s, it doesn’t matter, he just doesn’t want her alone and cold on this goddamned counter, and his hands are shaking, but he doesn’t have to cut in far to get the bullet. 

The only thing he says to her is, “Breathe, Natasha, just don’t forget to breathe.” And it’s out, and he wants to throw up, and he doesn’t.

Gauze and tape and antiseptic cream, and kitchen towels wrapped around her ribs, and she never even cried out although it must have hurt like a motherfucker.

He has to sit her up to give her his jacket, gently and he can tell by her face that it hurts. She opens her eyes.

"You keep saving me," she whispers, glassy with pain, and he can tell it's a swoony act she's stringing along even as she bleeds out. He risks shaking her just a little and her teeth chatter and he feels terrible.

"You keep walking off cliffs," he counters, sounding unbearably pissy. " I'm just trying to cushion your fall."

"Plus,” she says, trembly and shocky and he thinks fuck it, wraps his arms around her, "you let Stark see me naked."

"Just long enough to dig out the bullet," he says, and holds on tight, mouth against her hair. Tony sits on the floor, face gray, covered in blood and when he meets Stark’s eye there’s something blank and furious and compassionate there.

The Med team finally arrives, takes her and Tony away and he has to find a ride to the hospital. Turns out the older board member has a driver. When he arrives, they won’t let him into her room. It's not like he can just throw a fit, and they’ve released Tony, so finally he relents, goes back to the hotel to shower. 

Tony is sitting in his bedroom, his own cuffs still bloody. Still grey.

"That was some fucked up shit, Bruce."

He sits in the chair, stares at Tony. "Which part?"

Stark starts to laugh, and it’s shock and fear and bitterness and he’d laugh too but he’s not sure he’d stop. “She’s something, though. I don’t think she’s human.”

Bruce knows she is. He’s got proof all over his shirt, and Tony’s sitting in front of him, still breathing because she’d showed up with plans and antidotes.

"You kept your cool though. I thought for a minute..."

So did he, when he saw the ruin of her back, her ribs, all that blood. But she needed the better part of him. Somehow, that had helped, been enough.

“I think,” Stark says, “bleeding out in your arms is how spies say they love you.”

Bruce puts his head in his hands. “I don’t think I can survive that kind of love,” he says.

He wants to be there when she wakes up, but he falls into a brief, terror filled sleep and when he gets there in the morning, he finds that they pumped her full of antibiotic, re-dressed her wound and lost track of her about 7 a.m. when she left wearing silk underwear, a hospital dress and his coat.


	6. Amsterdam

She’s been running a fever for 5 days, off and on, and she’s too weak to go anywhere. She tore her stitches almost immediately, has been making due with bandages. She keeps taking over-the-counter antibiotics from the pharmacy, but she knows that unless she really sleeps, she’s never going to recover.

She’s got a string of text messages from Bruce on her phone, pleading mostly, to just tell him she’s not dead. The last few are angry, and that makes her feel better.

There’s only one from Stark. It reads Thank you, and then All this can be yours. It’s a simple bedroom, sparse and Swedish modern with a king size bed and a big print of Doctor No.

She doesn’t bother to respond.

There’s a moment, when she hears the front door open that she thinks both, ‘Finally, they’ve sent someone who can end this,” and a more shameful “I thought you’d find me,” and she’s wrong on both counts because it’s Barton looking down at her, mouth a line of disgust.

“Jesus, Nat,” he says, “I didn’t save your worthless life so you could waste it like this.”

He’s got better drugs, the right kind of antibiotic and a list of immunity boosters that have Banner written all over them, and she shouldn’t be taking this long to recover but even enhanced immunity requires a little concession to being human and she’d been giving it as little concession as possible. If she were going to die, she wanted to drive that car over the cliff herself.

She takes the shot though, let’s him change the dressing, drinks some egg lemon soup, and sleeps as Clint kicks back in an armchair in the tiny apartment and keeps watch.

When she wakes up six hours later, she feels better. Clint is clearly bored out of his skull, but his eyes are shrewd.

“Seriously Nat, it’s so perverse. You hate weed, and bicycles and blonds and rain. Why you’re fucking secret safety net is in Amsterdam, I can’t even… If you aren’t fucking or getting high or twiddling the tulips, it’s such a fucking bore.”

“I like being perverse.”

“No shit,” he says.

She waits. 

“Banner had Hill find me, said he thought you were trying to kill yourself, at the very least, punish yourself.”

“Maybe,” she says slowly. She can own that too. “Not anymore.”

“Stark’s about to have a conniption. His pet project in love with an assassin who won’t come home and play on his team.”

“He’s not in love with me.”

Clint just levels this look at her like she’s an idiot.

“You two are a pair,” he says. “You deserve each other. He destroyed the parking garage. After hours, of course. God, Stark was mad. It was fantastic. Rogers and I made popcorn, watched it on the CCTV. It was better than SportsNight.”

“I’m an idiot,” she says. “But I had to find out who I was.”

“You’re Natasha Romanoff,” Clint says. “Who the fuck else did you think you were?”

She twists her mouth.

“So are you ready to come home?”

**New York**

He’s sleeping with his hand up over his head. She’s watched him sleep in countries all over Europe, but he looks at home here.

She strips off her jeans, and her shirt, and crawls into his bed. The room Stark had set aside was beautiful, and at some point, she supposes, she’ll sleep there, test it out. But not tonight.

He opens his eyes, when he feels her get under the covers.

“Lights,” he mumbles, and rolls to his side. The look he gives her is dark, like what he really wants is to yell at her.

Instead he says, “Roll over.” She faces away from him, and he traces the scar from the bullet, the place her own knife had been used to cut into her flesh so he could pull it out, save her life. He feels the ribs, knitting back into place, faster now that she was taking care of herself. He presses his mouth to the scar, fingers against her ribs, kisses her spine, moving up to nip at the nape of her neck.

He moves his hands to her hips and stops when he feels the texture of her underwear. Thin, cheap cotton.

She turns in his arms, and then pushes down the covers. He starts to laugh so hard that he throws his arm over his face, almost convulsive. She thinks she still has a long way to go, they both do, but there’s forgiveness in that laugh, and his hands are so warm, and she can forgive herself, here in this place, maybe here with this person. Maybe help him learn to do the same, give himself some grace. But right this moment...

“Let me help you take those off,” he says, wiping away the tears of laughter, and rolling over. “I can’t possibly sleep with you knowing you’re wearing the Other Guy’s face on your crotch.”

She kisses him, settles into his body, and tells JARVIS to turn off the lights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes at [ tumblr.](http://thassalia.tumblr.com/post/124217748325/theres-a-dearth-of-poetry-about-spies)


End file.
